


Dark Places

by syredronning



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Dark, Kinky, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-02
Updated: 2013-04-02
Packaged: 2017-12-07 07:14:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/745773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/syredronning/pseuds/syredronning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some things cannot be made undone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dark Places

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the wonderful Elizabeth Helena for the beta and the ongoing encouragement for testing the waters of DS9, a series which I love but always find hard to write. All remaining errors are mine!
> 
> Originally published September 2005.

When he first learned who the man was that he'd met in the dark cellar of the bar which he hated but frequented more and more nevertheless during the course of his stay on Earth, he wanted to kill him. He wanted to put his hands around the throat and press until the man would gasp his last breath; he wanted to push his fists into the dark face, hitting it over and over until it would be one bloody pulp.

But then he found out that there was more pleasure in making the man suffer, again and again. Some might call it an S&M play, but this wasn't a play, this was real, and they both knew. What he delivered was punishment; and he realized soon enough that was the other man sought out was exactly that. A part of him was relieved to realize this. Another was outraged that what was meant for his own dark pleasure would - in a crooked way - deliver satisfaction for the other man too.

"You want that," he insisted once, hovering over the bundle of pain chained on the floor.

"Yes."

He beat him. "Don't ever say that again!"

And the man didn't.

Yet over time, the taste of revenge became stale. He felt quickly approaching the point where the man's suffering would buy him forgiveness, would make his guilt wither away and let him out of his personal cage with new strength.

And he had no intention of giving him that.

He stopped going to the dark place and began spending more time with his colleagues instead, carefully avoiding the wrong meetings where he would meet the man in daylight again.

*

He had sought him out. He had never believed in fate, and he wondered if the other man did; hero of the frontline, Holy Emissary of a people that was struggling after the long occupation from Cardassian forces and now suddenly stood at the edge of the newest defense lines.

He had sought him out, and he had succeeded. And he had sought out absolution, and he had almost gotten it. Counseling had only brought him so far, but it had never reached his guts, never done much to remove the feeling of utter defeat and endless guilt. How many people had stopped speaking to him after Wolf 359, blaming him for their dead family members? Many. But Sisko had been the only one to say it straight to his face with the anger and pain he'd expected to get from everyone.

Maybe counseling only went that far for Sisko too.

He offered himself in the darkness, to the darkness, knowing that Sisko wouldn't want to see him, because it would be a human face - and what he wanted to punish wasn't the human but the Borg. In the darkness, Sisko wouldn't see his own pain reflected, and Picard wouldn't see the revenge-seeking beast that the war and the Borg could bring out of any decent man.

It was enough to feel.

When it ended abruptly, he knew why and he understood. And he tried to avoid every meeting and reception where Sisko might appear.

They never met again.

*

The world is bright and insubstantial. But it is all he needs.

He is The Sisko now. There is no limit to the places in time and space he can go to. There is no limit to the things he could do. But it is not in him to end the pain in this universe. Without darkness, there is no light. All is one.

And forgiveness is irrelevant. One day, Picard would learn this.

***


End file.
